Teaching a MLF to a child

[chicaguapa]

I'm sure this has been covered before but the archive search never seems to work for me. DD is 4.5 and DS is 18m. DH & I lived in Spain for 2 years together and are both reasonably fluent in Spanish. I have also lived in France and Italy so am reasonably fluent in those languages too. I am also currently doing a degree in Modern Languages as I want to be a MFL teacher for Primary Schools to help improve access to language teaching at an earlier age.

Anyway, the point of that spiel was to show we both recognise the importance of learning foreign languages.

So I would like my children to learn Spanish. We buy R1 DVDs so DD can watch them in Spanish which she does choose to do sometimes. We also have Muzzy in Spanish which she likes. DD was an early talker and I feel she will have a natural aptitude for languages anyway. I was fortunate enough to start French at 7 and felt this gave me an excellent start with languages.

We have friends in Spain who came to visit before Christmas. Their ds is the same age as dd and he was well on his way to speaking English as they just seem to be better at speaking other languages abroad.

So I would love for my children to start as early as they can and as the facility for learning languages doesn't appear at DD's school until y5 I am considering paying for private lessons. What do you think?

I think it sounds like a great idea (EU policy is for all EU kids to be exposed to 2 non-family languages before the age of 11. The UK isn't following it!). For parental use there is a site, I think called multilingualfamily.co.uk (or variants on that) which lists what languages can be learned or shared in a specific area, but it's sketchy for the moment. It's a bit trendier than it was - For example, in Bristol there is a Spanish mother and toddler group, a French school, and a German-French-and English song group. Good luck. I'm bringing up DD bilingual French-English and using things like subscriptions to French children's magazines, interactive websites (with songs).

quick hijack - how are you finding Spanish Muzzy, chica?
Have been thinking of getting it for my dd but would like to hear how good it is considering the price.

Sorry, chain of thought - One option is to approach local secondary schools' Spanish teachers and ask them if they employ Spanish assistants, or if any of the teachers have an infformal group. If you're near a university, it's worth checking their language dept's website for local links, if any. I see you asked on a separate thread about La Jolie Ronde. We did approach a local tutor and I can't remember how much it cost but it wasn't much more than the average pre-school dance class. Hope this helps!

toadstool - where did you hear the info on 2 langs before 11 - sounds a great idea.

Back in 2003 or thereabouts, I downloaded some EU documents (I know there are thousands of them) online, putting forward the EU project that was formulated around the year 2000, aiming at a trilingual Europe - preparation for the entry of new countries. Something on the lines of 'Pour une Europe trilingue'. It's somewhere in cyberspace - I'll look for the link.

Back now - The 2000 doc (on a plurilingual Europe) has now developed into a major debate - here are docs from 2005. There are specific issues, e.g. re. national/regional languages, the status in schools of minority community languages such as Romany. I use this stuff to shock my students into realising that not everyone 'out there' is desperate to converse in English and free them of the obligation to use other languages, Some of the studies show the hottest debate is about what to do with English - make it a general 2nd language, exclude it altogether on the grounds kids pick it up from the media anyway...
URL (sorry can't do links)

www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Guide_niveau2_FR.asp

Another message to anyone in the Berkshire/Reading area, would like to go to under 5s Spanish group or meet someone who is Spanish or speaks it to help with our baby and me to learn. I have just found one group in Reading which also does French for under 5s.

Thanks toadstool for taking the time to find the info!